Instigating change in a globalised social environment : the impact of globalisation upon the promotion of vegetarianism in the United Kingdom

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In this thesis I examine globalisation as an ongoing social change to understand how it is
routinely reproduced by social actors. To do this I consider the impacts of globalisation in
an existing social setting and use a conceptual framework from the sociological literature
to interpret and explain the evidence. The empirical materials were gathered during an
ethnographic case study of The Vegetarian Society - an interest group that actively
promoted social change by presenting everyday individual food consumption in the
manner of reflexive 'life politics'. I use the concepts of 'interpenetration', 'relativisation',
'detraditionalisation' and 'institutional reflexivity' to indicate that processes of globalisation
were routinely reproduced as contexts and consequences of the organisation's motivated
social activity. I define globalisation as a change evident in individual consciousness,
social systems and in the reflexive relation between them and accordingly, the findings
centre on three issues. The first is the use of global images and language in the
promotional literature (instrumentally recontextualised to promote vegetarianism) and its
relation to global consciousness. The second is the relations between The Vegetarian
Society and other agents within globalised social systems (where negotiations to initiate
change often required compromise and pragmatism) and the contribution to systemic
reproduction. The third is The Vegetarian Society's changing role (as vegetarianism
entered the 'mainstream`) where it was reflexively repositioning to continue achieving its
aims in a 'post-traditional' (global) social order. The Vegetarian Society was enabled and
constrained by these intersecting processes of globalisation as it continued to instigate
change within globalised social structures (evident in changing opportunities and emerging
dilemmas). In this case study, ongoing globalisation was produced and reproduced as an
unintended consequence of a social actor's purposeful, localised activity.

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All items in PEARL are protected by copyright law.
Author manuscripts deposited to comply with open access mandates are made available in accordance with
publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or document.
In the absence of an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be
sought from the publisher or author.